Underhanded
by Threepwillow
Summary: Not-so-sequel to Headspace! A hearty dose of blackmail puts Kuwabara face-to-face with the first girl he's ever wanted to hit. :::YusukexKuwabara, YusukexOFC, M for a reason::: NOW COMPLETE!
1. Chapter 1

(**AN: **The unplanned third piece of the Sleeptalking/Headspace arc! This is Underhanded, dedicated to my best friend in the whole world for all the fabulous help she's given me this summer in terms of cosplay and conventions! She's basically my hero, and this is seriously the LEAST I could do. ILU RacerEff!)

**Underhanded ch. 1**

He'd decided long ago that he wasn't a big fan of Fridays. Even though they brought the end of the week, they usually also brought disaster, and he'd just have to start it all up again on Monday anyway - so why even bother? And yet certain events lately had been leading him - just a little - to reconsider.

Take today, for instance.

Urameshi Yusuke was walking out of the last day of his week's worth of detentions. The week had been kind of miserable - a bogus false-alarm of a case on Monday and Tuesday, a math test like no other on Thursday - and the detentions hadn't really helped his morale. But the first good sign of this Friday was the mere fact that he was escaping the school week, and was now heading back to his house. His house should have been empty when he arrived - good sign number two was that his mom was going out on a _date_, and she was going to be gone all night, which left Yusuke alone in the house to do basically whatever he wanted.

But he got home, and before he could unlock the door himself, good sign number three opened it.

"Heya," said Kuwabara, leaning on the doorframe a little, and before Yusuke could help himself, he broke out in a sly grin.

"Hey yourself," he teased, and without letting Kuwabara get another word in edgewise he kissed him, hard. Kuwabara's lips grinned against his and he returned it, and they half-walked, half-fell back into Yusuke's house, fumbling the door closed behind them. Yusuke lost track of the time that passed before his mouth was unoccupied enough to speak again.

"Mom's out," he said, a little out of breath.

Kuwabara's eyes darkened a little. "All night?"

"Oh, so we are on the same page then."

Stumbling, unable to control themselves, they maneuvered their shaky way to Yusuke's room. He thought about trying to make excuses for their almost constant eagerness for this - it was more prominent now that they'd thrown it out in the open, the constant interaction but lack of contact made it harder to go without, it was funny to see the looks on the girls' faces - but in reality, there was only one excuse, and it was _we are teenage boys and we are horny_. And Yusuke didn't really care that that's what it was, if it meant that as it grew dark outside his window he'd end up with hard-bodied, hard-headed, _hard_ Kuwabara in bed with him, looking down at him where he hovered over his erection with mock innocence.

"How the hell did you get to be so _hot_, you jerkwad," he mumbled, breathing hot on Kuwabara's skin.

"I...I've always been this hot," he insisted, even as he squirmed a little. "You were just too stupid to pay attention and notice."

"Look who's talking," said Yusuke. "I'd say the stupid one is the guy who keeps running his big stupid mouth."

"You gonna make me shut up?"

"Somethin' like that." Yusuke ran the flat of his coarse, stubby fingernail in a slow easy line up the underside of Kuwabara's cock, lazily back and forth. This kind of did the opposite of shutting him up.

"_Fuck_ - Urameshi - "

Yusuke paused. "...I'm in your bed and you're still calling me Urameshi?"

"Hey," said Kuwabara, "last time I checked this was your bed. And anyway, you still call me Kuwabara!"

"That's different! Everyone calls you Kuwabara."

"Well as long as I'm sayin' your name and not someone else's I don't see what the big idea is."

"Hmm...guess you've got a point." Yusuke repeated the path against Kuwabara's erection - this time with the tip of his tongue. Kuwabara shut up even less.

"Oh _shit_ - oh _god_ - "

"Mm, not my name, but I guess it's close enough." Kuwabara shot him a glare, and he grinned back, stroking at him with the tip of his finger again, knowing it was driving him crazy. Yusuke couldn't decide which was the most amazing, senselessly sexy part to watch - his face, scrunched up even uglier than usual in what was clearly a painful need, or his sweating muscular chest that rose and fell with every ragged breath, or the exact spot of contact where his hard and swollen shaft met the very tip of Yusuke's index finger...

Oh. Oh shit that was a hot idea. Could he actually do that?

Yusuke was sure as hell going to try. Pressing his mouth to a spot just below Kuwabara's navel as a distraction technique, Yusuke focused as much of his attention and energy as possible on his right index finger, as it traced up and down Kuwabara's erection. He felt it first, of course - it was his body, his _power_ - but after a moment or two the light and heat began pulsing there so strongly that Kuwabara felt it too, and as it crossed over the ridge of his cockhead he screamed. First with no words. Then with plenty.

"OhshitUrameshiareyoudoingwhatIthinkyou'redoingbecause_oh, shit_," he hissed, the muscles in his stomach tensing impossibly tighter, and with the way his frantic voice trembled through him Yusuke was getting a little tenser too.

"Is it hot?" he growled, kind of jealous. "You should do me like this sometime, with yours - "

"_Anything_," he groaned, "just - god - Urameshi - "

"You _better_," said Yusuke, and finally he gave in, and gave Kuwabara what he wanted - his lips and tongue closing around Kuwabara's erection, and his lightning-charged pointer finger pressing hot and firm to the sensitive spot just behind. Kuwabara was still crying out - loud enough that Yusuke was glad his mom wasn't home, loud enough that he was glad that the _neighbors_ weren't home - and he was just driving Yusuke more and more crazy with his gasping breaths and undulations, right up until Kuwabara came, with a sound like...

_Breaking glass?_

As he struggled with whether to spit or swallow (and ended up doing a little bit of both), Yusuke couldn't help but get distracted, and he rolled over a little to look off the side of the bed. Sure enough, someone had thrown something straight through the glass of his window - a large grey stone, with a note tied to it that even in the first rays of moonlight looked to be written on stationery that was _pink_.

"What the hell..." he murmured, and letting the spirit energy dissipate back into him from his finger, he climbed down to retrieve it even as the bed's other occupant was protesting. He unfolded the message and leaned in next to Kuwabara so they could both read it.

_I know your secret, Spirit Detective Urameshi,_ it read. _And if you value your secret identity, and want to keep on doing the things you do, you will come to me, and come to me alone. Tomorrow morning at eleven on the roof of your high school. You would be wise to comply._

There was, naturally, no signature. Aside from the rose-colored paper, it sounded pretty forboding, but it couldn't have come at a worse time.

Because looking down at himself, Yusuke was pretty sure that now, _he_ wasn't going to come at all.

Kuwabara seemed upset at the current state of things, too, and he huffed a sigh and lay back against Yusuke's pillows. "Man, I _hate_ Fridays!"

"Tell me about it," he said icily.

-xxx-

Kuwabara stayed the night, of course, and they were able to do a lot of things that they wanted to do before he had to sneak back out. Yet somehow it just wasn't right. Yusuke woke up Saturday morning in the kind of pissed off state he hated the most - furious, but with no real explanation for the things that were making him angry yet, and nothing he could do about it except go along with the stupid note's instructions. Shaking his head at his mom, who'd crawled in shortly after Kuwabara had crawled out and was now passed out on the sofa, Yusuke went through his morning routine, tried to clean up at least some of the shards of glass that were strewn across his floor, and then headed out to Sarayashiki. He hoped he wouldn't get too many weird looks for being there on a weekend. As much as he was okay with just busting some ass for weird looks, it got annoying sometimes.

As he walked he fidgeted with the small silver ring that went in a circle through the cartilage of his left ear - a habit he'd picked up since his last real case had left him with the piercing - and tried to think about the situation. (Since he obviously hadn't really felt like doing so last night.) It sounded like someone out here in the real world was looking to get in some good old-fashioned blackmail on him with the knowledge that he was a spirit detective. Seeing as the mere words "spirit detective" were pretty much proof that this wasn't bullshit, Yusuke figured this person probably meant business, but he was having a hard time being intimidated. When your day job involved destroying monsters, arresting demons and fighting for your life on a regular basis, plain old human blackmail was basically nothing. And the pink stationery had hardly been threatening. So the only part that was actually a little scary was that this person had gotten this knowledge in the first place.

So what the hell was their game?

The school building was locked, naturally, but Yusuke had no trouble hoisting himself up onto the fire escape and heading up that way. About a third of the way up he paused and turned back a little. "I know you're following me, bonehead." There was no answer, and Yusuke rolled his eyes. "You're not gonna fool me, I know what being followed feels like and your goofy ass is as un-subtle as they come."

Kuwabara leaned out from behind one of the trees that surrounded the main Sarayashiki and scowled up at Yusuke. "Hey, you're not supposed to be good at that!"

"What I lack in spirit awareness you make up for in clumsiness!" Yusuke called back.

"Well I couldn't just let you do this alone!" said Kuwabara, walking closer to the fire escape.

"Hey, the note said to be alone so I was gonna come alone. It's not like I haven't done way crazier shit alone before."

"I know," said Kuwabara, breaking eye contact, "but that was..._before_." His scowl deepened, and Yusuke didn't need to read his mind (though he still missed that) to know what he meant.

"Pink stationery is hardly threatening," he said. "You think you can make do with just chilling down here and waiting until I actually _sound_ like I'm in mortal peril to rush in and do the whole shining armor thing?"

"If you're getting your ass kicked I'm gonna laugh while I'm doing it, you know."

"I know."

They smiled at each other in a way that Yusuke refused to call _fondly_, and then Kuwabara went back to the tree and Yusuke scaled the fire escape to the roof.


	2. Chapter 2

**Underhanded ch. 2**

Kuwabara, for one, thought the whole thing was basically the dumbest shit he had ever heard.

While he'd been waiting on the ground for Urameshi's confrontation to end, he'd felt mostly scared. He'd basically been fearing for the worst, he realized. He could sense another person up there with relatively low spirit energy, which should have been reassuring, but the voice other than Urameshi's that occasionally drifted down to him in faint snatches of yelling had been female, and he'd always been worse at getting energy readings off girls (they were less primal and more floaty). He really couldn't make out _anything_ that was going on up there - Urameshi hadn't had to whip out any spirit attacks to defend himself, but beyond that they could have been doing anything from plotting the end of the world to playing freaking hacky sack. And when Kuwabara didn't know what was going on it made him edgy. Especially when it came to his _boyfriend_. (Hmph.)

But now that Urameshi was back down on the ground, devoid of any injuries but with the fury coming off him in waves after having told him everything that happened, Kuwabara was likewise just _pissed off_.

_"I was expecting a girl, I guess, after that pansy-ass pink paper, but she was just standing there looking all smug and shit, like she already knew everything I was gonna do before I even got there. It's that stupid chick from the other class, not the one that you're in or the one that I'm in but the other one, yeah? With the reddish pigtails or whatever? And she goes, 'Hi there Yusuke~'" (he'd made his voice sound high-pitched and trashy in an imitation of the girl) "and I was like 'just tell me what the shit is going on.' And she was all 'I'm Kobayashi Kotoko,' and I was like 'I don't give a crap, just tell me what's going on.' So she says 'I have a reputation for being the biggest go-to girl in the whole school when it comes to gossip. If I start something around, everyone will believe me because they know I have all the answers. And I'm gonna tell everyone in Sarayashiki and beyond that you think you spend your weekends fighting demons and that you came back from the dead, and they're gonna call you crazy and lock you up - unless you do what I want.' But I didn't know what the hell she could possibly want from me, you know? So I was like 'I don't know what you're gonna get out of this blackmail shit - I don't have a lot of money, and if you want me to do all your schoolwork I'll probably just make you fail,' and she was like, 'No, Urameshi Yusuke, what I want from you is for you to be my boyfriend!'"_

Kuwabara had never before wanted to hit a girl in his life. Now, he didn't think he'd have even stopped at "bloody pulp."

"But there's no way you're gonna go through with it, is there?" he said after a minute of it sinking in, really hoping that the stupid thing his voice was doing was not _choking up_.

It took a while for Urameshi to answer, which already wasn't a good sign. The answer he actually gave made it even worse. "I...don't really know what kinda choice I have, okay?"

"What the - "

"If she's right, and they do lock me up over here, then I won't be able to go over _there_ and do the things they're gonna lock me up for in the first place. That was kinda the whole point of keepin' this detective shit a secret, y'know? And this underhanded bitch really looks like she'll do it too. She told me if I didn't give an answer in 24 hours that she was just gonna start the rumors."

"But...you've got other people who'd vouch for you! Me! 'N' Yukimura!"

"You guys are my best friends, duh. Of course you'd cover for me." Urameshi sighed. "She may be an honor student, but even Keiko's been known to do some stupid shit when I'm involved."

Kuwabara was grasping at straws. "Your mom'd never let 'em do that to you."

"If she were in a right state of mind, no. But who knows when they'd catch her? When they'd catch me? She's not exactly reliable."

"Damnit, Urameshi!"

"I _know_, okay?" He was looking at Kuwabara with a greater edge of defeat than he'd ever seen in his eyes. "I know. If she were a monster I'd blow her to pieces. If she were a demon asshole I'd lock her up and put her away. But she's a scrawny conniving shrew of a _human being_, and none of our usual tactics are gonna work on her. I don't see an alternative."

"Then there's only one thing we can do."

"I know, I know, _god_, I am _so_ sorr--"

"We have to go talk to Botan about this."

-xxx-

While Urameshi retold the story to Botan, Kuwabara sulked. Somehow it was even more miserable and infuriating the second time around - now that he knew Urameshi's feelings on the whole subject. Now that he knew that he was just going to be a pussy and cave in, instead of doing what he was _supposed_ to do, what he was _famous_ for, which was fighting back even when fighting back didn't make any sense. They'd stood together to fight nasty demon after nasty demon - bastards who were trying to kill Urameshi, or take over the world, or unleash literal hell on innocent people. And he was going to take this shit just because some stupid girl with pigtails had threatened his _secret identity_? Kuwabara would never have given in like that.

Then again...Kuwabara had never actually been the _real_ spirit detective here. He didn't quite know what kind of pressure Urameshi was under from Koenma and the other folks in charge, he didn't care to get his nose in all the freaky demon politics. And if you got down to it, wasn't that always a superhero's greatest weakness? Kuwabara thought about some of the shows he watched on TV sometimes, the comic books he'd read. The surefire way to trick a hero into doing something was to threaten to expose him for who he really was. Then all the innocent people could exploit him whenever they wanted - and all the bad guys would know exactly who he was and where he'd be if they wanted to come along and try to kill him. He'd be one big walking target.

Except wasn't the other thing the hero usually took just as seriously the _person he loved_?

Quickly trying to banish all his extraneous thoughts away - especially that unbidden _L-word_ - Kuwabara tuned back into the conversation that Urameshi was having with Botan.

"This girl has put you in quite a predicament," Botan said, looking uneasy.

"That's one way to put it!" Urameshi snapped. "Can't you do something about all of this?"

"I'm not sure what! Usually if someone found out about spirit world goings-on who wasn't supposed to, we'd send in - "

"The spirit detective," Urameshi grumbled. "And she's on the lookout for me now. She kept talking about things that she _so_ should not know about - it's like she's been following me around for months! How did she slip under everyone's nose like that?"

"Girls are all floaty," Kuwabara mumbled.

"Ugh, can't I just kill her?"

"She's an innocent human being, Yusuke!" said Botan, shocked.

"Hey, I was an innocent human being when I died!"

"_Hardly._"

"Oh, oh, I get it. I spend my days beating up assholes and skipping a few days of school, and _I'm_ not an innocent human being. This chick stalks me, throws a brick through my window and _blackmails me_ which I'm pretty sure is _illegal_ - "

"And need I remind you that your death was an accident?"

"I'll make it look like an accident," he snarled under his breath.

"Look, we don't know how much she knows," said Botan. "If she's on to you, she's probably on to you, Kuwabara, and Keiko too. And we can't be sure with me, Kurama, or Hiei either. The best we can do is to send in someone else entirely, if we want to catch her off-guard and wipe her memories in some way. And I'm not even sure we can do that without pulling a _lot_ of strings. Oh, I hate it when things like this happen and there's no precedent for it," she whined. "I can probably get a contact through Koenma's office, but it'll take at least a few days before that person will make it here. And...well...until then - "

"I have a _girlfriend_," said Urameshi. "_Great_."

"Sorry." She said it as if answering Urameshi, but she coupled it with a worried look sent to Kuwabara, and a little pang of _something_ went through him. He didn't really know how to describe it, but he still reminded himself to thank her for it later, whatever it was.

Then suddenly her oar was in her hand, after being absolutely nowhere the moment before, and she reclined back onto it and zipped into the sky, leaving Kuwabara alone with Urameshi in the back of the park where no one ever went. He watched her go for a few moments, but then turned back to Urameshi. They exchanged awkward glances that weren't really what Kuwabara had been expecting, and then Urameshi just said, "_Shit_," and ran his fingers back through his already-gelled hair, and took off at kind of a half-run.

As Kuwabara turned to leave, too, he realized that what he'd been expecting from Urameshi was a look that sparked in him the same little pang of _something_, and it almost _hurt_ that he hadn't gotten one.

-xxx-

She was _everywhere_ for three days.

Oh, sure, Urameshi had waited until the last possible second of his 24-hour grace period before agreeing to her stupid blackmail. But Sunday afternoon she'd followed them to the arcade. Kuwabara had to bite his tongue so hard to keep from screaming at her that it almost started bleeding. Sunday afternoons at the arcade were _his_ time with Urameshi. Not stupid Kobayashi sitting in Urameshi's lap while he taught her the controls to a racing game - over and over again, because she "couldn't quite get the hang of it!" Urameshi may have had crappy spirit awareness but Kuwabara knew that his bullshit detector was better than this. He raced next to her, clobbering her in the first few races until she started whining.

"Yusuke-kuunnn, your _friend_ is being so mean! Make him go easy on me, he knows I'm new at this!" Behind her squinted-shut smiling eyes and curly hair there was a definitely sinister air, and Urameshi glanced back and forth between the two of them hesitantly.

"Hey...lighten up, would you Kuwabara? She's a girl, she's not so good at video games."

Kuwabara mumbled under his breath, but said nothing to the _happy couple_ - just switched to a different car that he had a harder time controlling and started missing boosts on purpose. He heard Kobayashi comment to Urameshi as they were leaving that _his friend was awfully quiet today_. But he didn't really have much to say to them.

Monday morning he was walking her to school. It was picturesque enough to make Kuwabara ill - some of the cherry trees in the neighborhood were losing petals off their blossoms, which scattered down into Kobayashi's long hair and made her giggle. At least once, Kuwabara saw Urameshi reach over and pluck a couple away, his hands lingering a little too long. Kuwabara's memory flared up - a thumb grazing across the corner of his mouth, wiping blood away a little too tenderly to be anything casual - and he scowled even more deeply, and beat up a couple of first years for no good reason. He got a detention before the first bell even rang - but he'd take it, if it meant he didn't have to watch how gross Kobayashi looked while Urameshi was walking her _home_.

How gross, but how...normal.

The part that sent him over the edge was Tuesday at lunch. He'd walked down the hall to Urameshi's class, looking for him and thinking that maybe they'd get to eat together on the roof today - even guys with _girlfriends_ got a break to hang out with the guys, didn't they? But when he peered into the classroom, there was Kobayashi already, hovering over him like a banshee or something and offering him a bento box she'd made. When Urameshi opened it up, Kuwabara could see heart- and star-shaped little somethings on the inside, all colorful and perfect, and Urameshi's small smile lit Kobayashi up like a lightswitch. She nudged her glowing face close to his, suddenly, and then.

And...then.

Her small pink lips fit against Urameshi's in a way Kuwabara could only hope that his ever had. Her kiss was soft and delicate, and Urameshi pressed back against her a little - _he was returning it_. As her hand swept back through his hair - a stupid motion Kuwabara had seen her do once or twice before, she seemed to really like it - she brushed past his left ear, and that's when Kuwabara noticed it.

_His earring wasn't there any more_.

When the chaste embrace was through, Kobayashi seemed to notice that someone was watching, and she turned to look at Kuwabara. "Oh, Kuwabara-kun!" she chirped with an acid fakeness. "We were just about to have lunch! Would you care to join us?"

"No," he said, "no. I was just leaving." He left the doorframe and took off down the hall, heading for the roof, definitely _not crying_. Kuwabara Kazuma didn't cry. Even if the guy who was supposed to be his boyfriend was kissing a _girl_ and _liking_ it - a cute _girl_ with curly red hair and an alliterative name, a _girl_ that made him special bento boxes, a _girl_ that was probably what he'd wanted all along.

Even if the guy he _loved_ didn't really seem to feel the same in return.

He ran past Botan in the hallway - she was heading in the other direction, almost just as quickly. But they were both so single-minded that neither of them stopped to ask the other what was going on.

Botan had to get to Yusuke. He had a case.


	3. Chapter 3

**Underhanded, ch. 3**

"I don't believe you," he said. "Not after last week!"

"It's legit this time! Right under your feet!" Botan bit her lip and seemed to think better of it. "Er - is this - "

"Kobayashi Kotoko," she introduced all-too-cheerily. "Don't worry about the detective stuff. I know everything. Go on, go on! I wanna hear about the new case!"

Yusuke scowled, but Botan continued. "It's a lesser demon, no great power to him - not compared to you, anyway," she added. "But compared to your average human - your average human _girl_..."

"Even the scum have scum," he muttered.

"It's been using the sewers to get around - it seems this demon kind of has the power to _vaporize_ himself, and slink through really narrow passages. He crawls up through the pipes into girls' bathrooms and the like, does unspeakable things to them, and then swallows their souls and leaves their physical forms to rot."

"Yeesh," said Yusuke. "I mean, I like a good panty shot as much as the next person - "

"Pervert!" Kotoko cried.

"Don't act like I haven't heard that all before."

"You need to act quickly, though, while we're still certain of his location. There's no way he's further than a 3-mile radius from this school."

"And you're sure this isn't just another wild goose chase?"

"Certain of it!"

"Well then let's go!"

Yusuke and Botan stared at Kotoko.

"What?"

"You _honestly_ think that I'm going to take a cumbersome human with no special powers on a case that'll basically put her right in the hands of a demon that's gonna rape her and then eat her soul?" said Yusuke. "Are you retarded?"

"She _said_ he's not going to be a big deal for you to take down," Kotoko whined. "And I want to come with you on a case! Didn't Yukimura do that with you a lot?"

"Yes - when she was at greater risk _away_ from him than _with_ him. You're just going to put yourself in even more danger!"

"Yusuke's my _boyfriend_, he would never let anything happen to me!" Kotoko insisted. "And I wanna come. If you don't take me, I'm telling everyone!"

Yusuke winced. Her one bargaining chip and she was going to milk it for all she was worth. He shot a desperate look at Botan.

"How long till that chick gets here?"

"Two or three more days, tops, I promise you."

"Tell her to hurry her ass up." He sighed a long-suffering sigh, looking back and forth between his dumb-ass fake girlfriend and his pseudo-babysitter. All these freaking _girls_. Life with Kuwabara was infinitely easier. Why was it that the people who seemed to dick around the most were the people _without_ dicks?

Kuwabara...his thoughts returned to the taller, infinitely more interesting redhead, and the way he'd run from the room after barely two seconds of speaking. He hadn't actually thought Yusuke was being _genuine_ with all this dumb mushy girlfriend crap, had he? It worried Yusuke, and he stole his hand up to spin his earring in its loop a couple of times - only to remember when his fingers got there that Kotoko had demanded he take it out. _People ask questions!_ she'd said, as if that was supposed to mean anything. And who cared if it did!

"Yusuke," Botan warned. Oh, right. No time to get lost in thought. There was a case. But even so, Yusuke leaned to her ear and whispered some brief instructions.

"Hey, go find Kuwabara and make sure he's okay. Tell him that I lo-- " He paused, and changed his mind. "That all this Kotoko stuff is bull. Send him on after us if he wants to work on the case too."

Then, angrier than he'd meant to be, Yusuke shot out his hand and grabbed Kotoko's wrist. If he was going to drag her along, he was going to _drag_ her along. "Come on, then," he said, and they marched past Botan, and out the door.

-xxx-

"Can you really get into the sewers from here?" she asked from about two paces behind him.

"Yeah," said Yusuke, only half-paying attention - this was her third stupid question in the last five minutes. "The very first time I ever apprehended a demon was around here somewhere, I think."

"Wow, really? What was that like?"

"It was tiny," he said. "With horns. Crawled in through some dude's ear, turned him into an asshole, so he took - uh." He didn't really feel like telling the rest of the story. Kotoko already bitched at him when he mentioned Kuwabara too much. "Some...important stuff."

"That's terrible! Was he hard to fight? What did you do with him when it was over?"

Geez, it was like if Botan _didn't_ already know the answers to everything. He couldn't imagine someone more annoying. "I don't know, okay? I just turned him into the good guys and stopped giving a crap. It's what I usually do."

"That's so cool. You're so tough!"

"It's whatever." He really wished she would just _shut up_. It was the least she could do after driving Kuwabara away - without Mr. Tickle Feeling, he was going to have to rely on his eyes and ears in the dark murk of the sewer, and her yakking wasn't helping at all.

"Ew, yuck!" she yelped, as they began entering its real depths and encountering, well, sewage.

"Hey, you're the one that invited yourself along on this case. It's the sewer, what do you expect?"

That, amazingly, silenced her for a moment, and Yusuke began walking a bit more stealthily, trying not to splash and drown out any possible demon sounds. The light of the place where they'd entered was growing fainter as they rounded a corner. Once Yusuke thought he heard something, but it turned out to be a beady-eyed rat.

"Gross!" Kotoko shrieked, clutching at the skirt of her fuku. Yusuke rolled his eyes. Not even _Keiko_ had been this bad.

"Yusuke-kun, you're going to buy me ice cream when we're done here, right? To make up for making me come down here in the gross sewer?"

"I will buy you whatever the hell it takes to make you _shut_ - " But he silenced himself just as quickly, because that time it had definitely not been a rat. He listened closely, then heard it again: a distinctly otherworldly hiss, from somewhere beyond them and to the left. He darted swiftly forward and Kotoko was jumpily on his heels, her hesitant feet splashing in the grime.

"Yusuke-kunnn," she whined, but he just held up a hand to silence her again. The sound echoed through the pipes again - louder, and yet somehow not seeming any closer. It must have entered a pipe already, was probably preparing to emerge somewhere -

And weren't they directly under the school?

"Oh, crap, Urameshi, you _idiot_," said Yusuke, and he ran past Kotoko and back toward the sewer's entrance. "Botan, _you_ idiot!" Heading down into the sewers themselves wasn't the right approach at all! Where better to prey on unsuspecting virginal souls than in the girls' restroom of a public school?

"Yusuke-kun, wait for me!"

-xxx-

Kuwabara splashed one last handful of water across his face, giving his own cheeks a couple of good slaps and willing himself to snap out of it. From this point forward he was going to start anew. If Urameshi was going to have a girlfriend, so could he! He put on a winning grin and tried to stride from the men's room with renewed purpose. Unfortunately, someone was waiting for him, propped up against the wall right by the outside of the bathroom door.

"Kuwabara?"

"Oh, hey pretty lady!" he said. Botan! A girl! And yet why did the enthusiasm simply not come as easily as it had before?

"Are you...doing okay?" she asked hesitantly.

"Never better!" he lied. "What's the latest?"

"Oh," she said, and turned away, looking to the ground. "It's just - well, Yusuke seemed concerned about you, and he had some things he wanted me to tell you."

Kuwabara's face finally fell, unable to stand up to this. Who was he kidding? "Forget his crap," he said.

"But he - "

"No. I'm not hearing this. Geez, I knew he was a punk, but I thought for sure he'd be man enough to break up with me in person." He laughed bitterly at the phrase. _Break up_. "I know he's with that stupid Kobayashi babe now, and they're gonna have a wonderful life together. So I think I'm just gonna go party with Yukimura, and we can both bitch and moan about how that Urameshi son of a bitch had to go and ruin our lives. If you'll excuse me."

"_Kuwabara_, that's not - "

But she got cut off again - not, however, by Kuwabara this time, but by a vicious hiss of air emanating from back inside the bathroom, a hiss which grew in volume and creepiness until it was definitely a voice and not air. This was a demon.

"What the?"

It slithered out the door to sprawl between Kuwabara and Botan - it was almost like a snake and a centipede all at once, writhing and hissing and sniffing around. Botan froze, and Kuwabara just scowled.

"Ah c'mon!"

Amazingly, it spoke. "Youuu!" It was staring at Botan. "Yooouuu...not a human?"

"No I'm not, thank you very much!" she asserted, though she still looked scared out of her mind, trapped between the bathroom corner and the demon's long, hideous form. "No souls for you today!"

"Annnd yoouuu...not a lady~," it said to Kuwabara.

"Hell no," he said. But for the most part, he was ignoring it. Botan didn't seem to like this.

"Kuwabara, can't you kill this menace?" she demanded. "Don't just stand there, do something!"

But Kuwabara had already made up his mind. "Nah, I don't think so."

"_What_?"

"If I'm not gonna be hanging around Urameshi any more, there's no need for me to stay involved in this spirit detective bullshit. I'm gonna go back to being a regular guy and just beating up other regular guys for fun. Urameshi can handle it."

When the demon realized there were no delicious human females around to deflower, it began to slither off down the hallway in search of them. Botan was looking panicked. "Botan, you _idiot_," she berated herself quietly. Kuwabara started walking in the opposite direction, back toward where he'd left his lunch.

Quite suddenly, Urameshi Yusuke was blocking his path.

"Kuwabara Kazuma, you are a freaking _jackass_!" he screamed.

"Takes one to know one!" Kuwabara shot back almost automatically. "I didn't come here to listen to you - "

"What the hell do you think you're doing? The Kuwabara I know would never - "

"Well I'm not the Kuwabara you know any more, because you're not the Urameshi _I_ - "

"Innocent people could - "

"Why can't _you_ just - "

"_Ahhhh!!!_" Kobayashi screamed - because as he and Urameshi had stood there yelling at each other, the demon had apparently sniffed her out, and had come slithering back to where they all stood. Kuwabara and Urameshi both stood between it and the girl, blocking its path. Urameshi extended his index finger toward it.

"Nice try," he said with a smirk - but lightning-fast, with a speed Kuwabara never would have guessed it possessed, the slinking demon shot up and wrapped around his torso like a boa constrictor, immobilizing him and scraping over him with dozens of tiny prickling legs. It was enough to make him feel violated already, even through his clothes. With Kuwabara as a meat shield, Urameshi's spirit gun finger faltered.

"Mmmm, niiiice tryyyy, detectiiiive," it said. "Noooow what will it beeee - yooouuur friennnnd, or the giiiirrrrl?"

Urameshi did the last thing anyone was expecting - he grinned. "Done."

Before anyone else knew what was going on, he yanked Kobayashi forward by the wrist and threw her at the demon. Anxious for its prey, it tossed Kuwabara aside, practically into Urameshi.

"Yusuke-kun!" she whined. "How _could_ you?!"

"No, bitch, how could _you_," he retorted. "You're the crazy bitch who invited herself along on this case, _you_ get the full effects of what it's like to be stuck in real spirit detective situations. God, you are such an _idiot_!" He paused, and turned a meaningful look to Kuwabara. "And there's only room for one idiot in this biz."

That one look ruined him, of course. He knew in that instant what he'd known all along: he was lying to himself. He'd never get over this. He was so, so sold. To the point that he was even completely oblivious to the demon's long, forked tongue snaking out of its mouth and down the front of Kobayashi's fuku collar, if it meant Urameshi Yusuke was staring at him with wide, condescending brown eyes, as if he were the biggest moron in the world. Which was kind of how he was beginning to feel.

"But _Yusuke-kun_," she insisted, "you're my _boyfriend_ - "

"No I'm _not_!" he shouted. "Can't you get it through your thick skull? What you're doing is _blackmail_! It's _fake_! I don't love you! I love _this guy right here_!"

Kuwabara planted one on him just as Botan crashed down on the demon's squishy centipede body with a hefty metal trashcan.

-xxx-

"So she was a spirit detective too?"

"Somethin' like that," Urameshi said. "I dunno what they really call them in China. But that spirit lightning thing she had, _wicked_. If she'd been here longer and if she'd spoken Japanese better I'd've asked her to teach me how."

"No kiddin'," said Kuwabara. He reached down to his bare stomach - the place where Urameshi's head happened to be resting - and brushed against his hair a little. But not in the way that stupid Kobayashi chick had done it. Urameshi actually _liked_ his way.

"And she said she liked my earring," he said, the grin evident in his voice even though Kuwabara, eyes to the ceiling, couldn't see it. His hand trailed closer to Urameshi's ear, and his fingertips touched it, and spun it through a couple of times.

"That's a girl I can respect, then."

"Kobayashi doesn't remember a thing," he said, reaching up to entwine his fingers with Kuwabara's own. "Kind'f a shame, since she totally deserved the mental scarring that demon's tongue would have left her with. Guess we can't win everything."

Kuwabara disagreed. Victory, as far as he saw it, was theirs.


End file.
